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Ennio Marchetto performs his one-man show at Geffen Playhouse this week.

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Ennio Marchetto, Italian comedian/quick-change artist/illusionist began his colorful career as a costume designer for Carnevale, Venice’s famous spring-time masquerade, but now he parades his designs onstage in an original show where he spoofs pop-culture icons.

In previous shows, Marchetto has parodied popular and classical musical stars including the Three Tenors, Celine Dion, Boy George, Barbara Streisand, Madonna and Marilyn Monroe. If he is not posing as a music star, he instills life in works of art (like the Venus De Milo, Mona Lisa and Statue of Liberty) and other pop icons as he wraps himself in their paper-likeness and performs a short vignette in that character set to a musical soundtrack. The Venus De Milo, for example, is horrified when she discovers she has lost two important appendages.

What sets the Venetian apart from other “impersonators,” though, is his ingenious use of paper. Marchetto’s costumes are all made from the colorful stuff, and with dexterous manipulations he morphs from Queen Elizabeth to Freddy Mercury and from a sumo wrestler to a can-can dancer.

Marchetto designs his guises with the aid of Sosthen Hennekam, who studied costume and fashion design in Paris with prestigious fashion designers like Jean Paul Gaultier. Together the team, who first collaborated in 1989, has created an innovative, thought-provoking and hilarious piece that has taken them around the world.

Not only does Ennio Marchetto elicit laughter, he honestly considers his subjects and then makes the audience examine the figures they often unyieldingly accept in popular culture. Who knew masks could reveal so much?

Marchetto will bring his act to Westwood this week for a limited run from July 29 to Aug. 3 at the Geffen Playhouse. Order tickets at www.geffenplayhouse.com or call (310) 208-5454.

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